


Marfan

by Buttons15



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 09:46:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12702318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buttons15/pseuds/Buttons15
Summary: Of orthopedic hammers, the murder of bacteria, genetic diseases and unsolved sexual tension.





	Marfan

Angela didn’t knock when she opened the lab door, but Moira was not surprised.

She’d been expecting her.

“Well, well,” she said. She didn’t mean to mock, but by then she wasn’t even sure if she could get the edge off her tone anymore. “Look who decided to visit.”

Moira didn’t turn, but she knew Angela well enough that she could picture her rolling her eyes.

“I need a CRISPR. I know you have those.”

Moira couldn’t hold back a bitter smirk. She tapped her fingers against the desk rhythmically, absently clicking the mouse with her free hand. “You need a CRISPR, huh? I thought you didn’t meddle with them genes.”

A sigh. The room temperature seemed to drop. “I don’t mess with genes in _people_. You know that. But Jesse is diabetic and _something_ –” she paused, and Moira could hear the seething accusation in her voice “ – something killed my insulin-producing bacteria, and now I _need to splice up more._ So if you could be so kind as to hand over a kit - _”_

Pushing with her feet, Moira turned over the chair, and sure enough, Angela froze mid-sentence. This time, she let herself grin openly. She was always one for dramatic entrances.

“ – What happened to your eye?”

She tried not to blow up, she really did, but she was angry and holding it back for far too long. “Well, what do you _think_ happened to my eye, oh great prodigal doctor? Or does your extensive knowledge only apply to things you can fix with hammers?”

Angela flinched, but didn’t answer. Moira hated herself a little for it, yet didn’t back down. “The retina detached, of course. As expected, diseases follow their natural courses if left _untreated_.  Sadly for me, mine follows it regardless of the gene being out.”

“Moira –”

“Shut up!”  She stood fast, way too fast. Her knee sent a jolt of pain that irradiated the way down to her toe. “Don’t you patronize me. I know what you’re going to say. I know what my treatment options are _._ I _know!_ ”

“A prosthetic –”

“And then what? What, Angela?”  She clenched her hands into fists. Part of her told her she was being childish – it wasn’t Angela’s fault, it wasn’t anyone’s really – but by then she was too far carried away. “A prosthetic for the other eye when it happens? A new kneecap when this one wears out?”

“Moira –”

“ _Shut up!”_

She did. They both did. For a moment there was silence – complete silence, as expected of a nearly empty wing of the watchpoint at two in the morning. And then she heard it, they both heard it:

_Click-click-click-click._

She didn’t look for the source – she knew where it came from. It was inside her, and it was maddening.

“How do I sleep with _this?”_ she tapped herself on the chest, where the mechanical valve which replaced her long-broken one worked. She could very much picture it in her mind the mechanical parts working.

“What do you expect me to do?” Angela hissed. “What do you _want_ from me, Moira? What more can I give you?”

 _Your support,_ she thought, but didn’t say. Now that she was done raging all she felt was empty inside. Angela never meant her harm. Angela had bent her principles and morals as far as she could, Moira knew. It wasn’t her fault that Marfan was a developmental disorder, wasn’t her fault that genes fixed or not, most damage was already done the very moment Moira was born.

It wasn’t her fault, but Moira still resented her anyway.

“Honesty, at least. The truth.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 _That_ made burning hot rage flare up once again. “Do you think I’m _stupid?_ You don’t need fucking CRISPR to make insulin. People have been making insulin with plasmids since 1982. So what exactly are you building transgenics for, Angela?”

Angela took a step back, visibly retracted and hugged herself. Moira wanted more than anything to reach out to her then. Instead, Angela lifted her chin with contempt. “Opioids. Is that what you wanted to hear? There you have it. Opioids. That’s what I’m making.”

Moira didn’t fake surprise. She already knew. “You know addiction is something genetically encoded.”

“No. _”_

“I’ve done it before. It wouldn’t be too hard.”

“ _No!”_

“Just give me a chance!” she pleaded, even though she didn’t mean to. “Give me a chance and I can –”

“What, Moira? Fix me?” Angela hissed.

“Well I didn’t see you complaining when I did it before!”

There it was. The elephant in the room. _You hypocrite,_ she wanted to say, even though they’d had this talk a thousand times. She would tell Moira it was not the same, that Huntington’s was a disease that didn’t manifest until late in life so removing the gene was _prevention,_ whereas Marfan’s damage happened inside the womb.

Correcting the DNA would slow the progress, but what was done, was done. She still needed a new heart valve even though she’d corrected FBN-1. Her aorta would stop stretching but the stents were already there. And her joints that hurt from carrying the weight of her disproportionate body would remain hurting until the day she died.

She was _malformed_. Angela wasn’t. Angela got lucky. She knew that very well.

The silence between them felt heavy. “Can you blame me for searching for the same thing I once offered you? Can you blame me for trying to find a cure?”

Angela sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. She looked nothing short of exhausted. Moira felt her heart twinge. “There’s no cure, Moi. You know that. There’s only treatment. Management. Damage control. I know it sounds terrible and I know it’s not fair, but if you let me help –”

“Let _me_ help _you,_ Ange.”

The other shook her head. “My addiction is mine to deal with.”

“Do you not want it gone?” She took a step forward, and then another, until they were close enough that she could reach her.  “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to,” Angela snarled, but didn’t walk away. “Patient autonomy is a _thing_ , you know, and I’m shockingly capable of informed consent… or informed refusal, in this case.”

“But why?” She didn’t expect an answer.

Angela looked away.

Silence.

“I could ruin you, you know.” _Just like you ruined me_ , she thought, but she knew that wasn’t quite right either. Angela had supported her until the very end, as much as she could, even when she had long passed the edge of reasonable research. “What would Overwatch do if they knew their saint is a junkie?”

“What _can_ they do? What can this hot mess of an organization do, Moira?” She shrugged. “Not that it matters. I know you wouldn’t do it anyway.”

“Oh, do you now?” She challenged, feeling a twinge of excitement she had never quite forgotten.

“Yes,” Angela smirked, and grabbed her by the collar of the lab coat.

There it was – the confidence, the aggression, the things she’d expect from the world’s best first respondent, the things she’d fallen for, hard, much to her shock.

Angela yanked her close, their bodies touching, blue eyes holding her gaze with an intensity that gave her shivers. She saw in them a mix of affection and hatred that suited them so very well. Her heart sped up a little, exposing her feelings with a distinct _clickclicklclick._

Maybe that was what she wanted all along.

“We are far too much alike,” Angela growled before mashing their lips together.

Her hands were everywhere, grabbing, demanding, sometimes cruel. Moira gave her exactly what she wanted, as it had always been.  She whimpered when she felt teeth on her throat, and then Angela’s voice in a whisper, her warm breath on Moira’s ear:

_“You kill my fucking bacteria again and I’m smashing up your lab.”_

Moira damn well knew she had the tools to.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Special thanks to [Andy](http://logicalfangirl.tumblr.com/) who came up with the wonderful idea of Marfan Moira and let me write it!
> 
> \- I cannot freaking believe I opened a genetics notebook to write this thing I swear to god I never wanna read about a ribosome again
> 
>  
> 
> _( On the Angela-to-Moira scale of medical area of preference I'm definitely closer to the former's "get your tiny things off my face and bring me some steel bars and a drill")_
> 
>  
> 
> \- There's a lot of things to be said about this piece. When it comes down to scientific knowledge, the concepts of Huntington's and Marfan's are important, so here goes:
> 
> \- They're both monogenic diseases, which means a single gene is responsible for them. The difference is that Marfan's greatest harm happens inside the womb, whereas Huntington's happens during adult life. In practical terms, it means that if you're born with Huntington's and you remove the gene then you're 100% rid of it, while if you're born with Marfan's and remove the gene, you may show improvement but whatever was already damaged remains damaged and has to be fixed through other means.
> 
> \- CRISPR is a technique of gene edition that _already exists_ and is used in this fine year of 2017. As expected, it brings a huge moral dilemma of what consists of curing and preventing diseases and what would step dangerously close to eugenics, and this is an issue I tried to transpose into this story. 
> 
> \- While Angela agrees that editing things such as Huntington's, Cystic Fibrosis and Sickle Cell anemia is okay, when it comes down to genes that would code addiction she feels it crosses a line and she's not quite willing to bend her morals that far. Moira disagrees - she sees addiction as something that should be _cured_ , whereas Angela sees it as something that should be _overcome_.
> 
> \- There isn't, of course, a single right answer to that. While some people may see the experience of overcoming things like addiction and depression as something that shaped them and caused personal growth, others may think "please remove this the fuck away from me", and those two are not mutually exclusive either. It's a difficult matter and one I don't mean to solve or even give an opinion on with this story, merely expose its existence.
> 
> \- What to do and not do with DNA editing is a terribly shady moral debate that the scientific community is having right now and hopefully I managed to convey that much through characters that are very much polar opposites.
> 
> \- Moira is most definitely the bottom
> 
> \- The thing about prosthetic heart valves going "click-click-click" is actually a really serious issue we have with people who get them, and psychological follow up is often needed because hearing your own mechanical heart beat is a maddening experience.
> 
> \- Thanks for reading! <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Marfan[Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13576209) by [Arioch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arioch/pseuds/Arioch)




End file.
